September 22, 2009

White Silence

White supremacy adapts like a virus to new circumstances, gone are the times where blatant racism/white supremacy via laws is considered as accepted norms of the time, today’s white supremacy hides behind the surface of ‘tolerance’, wants to decorate itself with some selected Persons of Color, calls this ‘multiculturalism’ and open-mindedness, while white supremacy itself remains intact.

Those considered on the political right, the Limbaughs and others, who just give a voice to the ‘politically correct’ mainstream due to the silence of mainstream and also most white politicians, are at the same time the alleged out-casts where a ‘decent white’ can point his/her finger at, feeling calmed and self-satisfied not to be ‘like them’, not to be a white supremacist.

White America’s art to distort historical facts and to present their illusions like reality, the ‘good’ North vs. the ‘bad’ South, ignoring the Northern historical reality in first actively participating in slavery and later passively participating, ignoring the fact that the Civil War was not about ‘freeing the slaves’ and also forgetting the many Black victims of the Civil War, their lost lifes don’t count in the white narrative of sacrifying white life for the alleged freedom of slaves.
Also ignoring the schizophrenic ability of celebrating themselves as liberator of Europe from the evils of Nazism, with Jim Crow still at home.
Trying to take over the Civil Rights Movement as if it were a white success.
Trying to ignore the fact that without the high voter turnout of People of Color in the last election Obama wouldn’t be president but McCain.

So-called minorities are only acceptable within a racist system as long as they ‘know their place’ in the white narrative and as long as they are no serious competition to white entitlement.
Knowing their place means not to have a voice, which is considered ‘uppity’, not to insist in basic human rights and to equal access to all resources available within a nation. White people’s attitude also often infiltrates white ‘anti-racism’ on every level, where white entitlement wants again to define somebody else’s reality and expects the grateful Person of Color who should not contradict or challenge the ‘good white persons’, white entitlement unable or unwilling to truly create anti-racist places, truly living the change they allegedly want to see. But as it seems, not now, not within their own organizations, their neighborhoods, workplaces and so on.

The empty lip-service, ‘we [whites] are all complicit’ remains empty, as if this acknowledgement is already good enough to be ‘anti-racist’, as well as the acknowledgement of ‘white privilege’ or ‘we are all racist’ would be a heroic act to do without actually living the consequences of such acknowledgements. Anti-racists who believe that allowing People of Color to sit at white tables is a gracious act of tolerance, but only as long as People of Color don’t disrupt white entitlement and white self-proclaimed experts.

Looking to the US from outside right now, with white hysterical mobs displaying Obama as Hitler, witch doctor and more, it reminds me of slave patrols back in American history. Slave patrols, made up of white ablebodied men of every class, to control Black people and to protect whites from their greatest fear – Black revolts. Slave patrols, after Emancipation turning into the KKK as well as the today’s institutional power of police.
White people today who are trying with all means necessary to remain in control, to remain in power, to remain a political white nation with their feelings that only white power is the right power and also with their distorted assumption that Black people demand ‘too much’ by demanding basic human rights.

It is quite irrelevant how many whites today participate out of blatant racist motifs in ‘tea-parties’, alleged anti health care rallies, a white mob serving to intimidate and trying to control, relying on the knowledge of the old-ancient white fear that Black people ‘will take over’.

Relevant are the many silent white by-standers who allow this to happen right now, who also seem to believe, that racism is a Black problem Black people have to challenge or who are still caught in their post-racial illusion, who seem to believe that America’s somewhat democracy can remain intact when white militias based on irrational fears and white paranoia are training the overthrow of government, when a president gets more death threats than nobody before him.

White America’s hysterical reaction to 9/11 indicates how high the feeling of entitlement is, how aggressive their reaction is when the world’s most powerful bully gets only slightly back what she expects the world and certain groups within the US to take.
White America’s hysterical reaction to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who just put in words what many also outside America think about America indicates how far away white America is from reality, how unwilling to deal with her reality and how unable to accept Black voices who tell the truth.

Obama, his mere presence too much to accept for many whites, where inciting racial violence becomes more and more mainstream, with the Limbaughs just speaking out what the ‘politically correct’ average white only mentions behind closed doors.

America’s unique ‘freedom of speech’ laws which in reality never has been about the actual freedom of speech but the right of the powerful also to constantly incite racial hate and to have a mainstream voice to call for the oppression of those considered not white. Being able at any time to create a climate where violence of whites towards People of Color becomes acceptable and violence of People of Color towards whites raises fears of revolts.

White people’s collective inability to let go their slave holder mentality – both ways, the blatant racism as well as paternalism, with their silence aggreeing with the white mob who is doing the job for them, trying to keep America white dominated, relying once again on white terrorism, back then via patrollers, today via the average ‘angry white men’.

The strength of a democracy is not the protection of the power of those already in power, the strength of a democracy is only as strong as the alleged weakest member(s) of society. A democracy which can run over the rights of less represented members and/or can ignore their existance also because of the passive support of a majority is vulnerable to becoming a dictationship not only in a hidden but also open way.

A nation where it seems to be considered as normal or business as usual that innocent people are being executed in the name of the US, where a majority doesn’t seem to see it as problematic that already the next innocent person is at risk of being executed, where the high numbers of people shot by police don’t seem to cause an uproar in America and where the fact that America has the highest prison population is blamed on Black people and not on white supremacy controlling possible dissidents and also weakening opposing political powers already is a form of dictationship. Regardless what America wants to call herself.

A system which is able to distort white people’s reality, able to tell them the lies that they are ‘better’ than Black people, regardless how much the system also often works against those whites. Whites being stupid enough to work against their own well-being, being ready to act as the violent foot-soldiers for a system that has no use for them other than taking the advantage of how easy they can be manipulated against the alleged other.

Those whites who wave now their flags of alleged freedom and ‘government should get out of their way’ never have had any problem with governmental interference in people’s lifes on a daily basis and also government protecting white people’s ‘right’ to be white [via laws], they never have had a problem with their tax money helping to oppress an entire group of people and never have had a problem to take Black tax money who have paid for their own oppression via government and its executives. And so it becomes clear what kind of freedom those whites want to have: The freedom to continue oppression and white supremacy. Supported by the silence of ‘mainstream’ and also by most of its white representatives